Great area and completely different scenery from your home depending on whether you go east or west! I've told several newbies to antelope hunting on a couple sites to put in for unit 7 and to get off the roads and actually hunt to have a good time and shoot a goat or two! It looks like Newcastle will be their home base while they are out there and a couple are talking about tenting it out in the BLM.

Area 7 is great, lots of National Grassland and Private walk in areas. No need to worry about where to hunt. Get a thunder basin National Grassland map and a Walk In Area map (the latter from the fish and game website).

If one doesn't get a goat in this are its because he forgot to get out of bed.

That's exactly what I told them if they got off the roads and did some walking because the goats are there. I actually have a CD ROM for Wyoming and I made and mailed them a good map of the east half of unit 7 with all the walkin areas marked, as well as the Grasslands and even put a bunch of waypoints on the map so they will know right where they are. If they do their part, they should have a good time.

from what i'm reading, it seems as though the northern parts of SD were hit harder than the central/southern parts. is this correct? i live in Rapid City and for the first time i will (hopefully) be hunting the grasslands for deer and antelope bordering the badlands as well deer in the black hills. should i still be able to expect a good year?

If you can walk and have the time to be serious about taking both animals I would think you will be okay. I don't know what the deal is over in antelope unit 7 in Wyoming, but they cut the buck tags way down like there was a big dieoff or something that I haven't heard about. The unit sold out of buck tags in the draw because of that when previously there were usually leftovers for sale.